ABSTRACT
The final campaign of Mah.mu-d’s life, in 420/1029, marked a total change of direction in Ghaznavid ‘foreign policy’. Apart from the not very successful intervention in Kirma-n, in which the Sultan was not personally involved, all Mah.mu-d’s campaigns had been directed towards the east, with the successive invasions of the Indian sub-continent and the wars with the Qarakha-nids, the chief purpose of which was to ensure that the Oxus remained as the impenetrable frontier of the Ghaznavid empire. But, in 420/ 1029, he turned his attention westwards; his forces invaded the Bu-yid kingdom of Jiba-l and occupied its capital Rayy. Majd al-Daula, the nominal ruler of Jiba-l, had been dominated by his forceful mother Sayyida (‘the Lady’), the de facto ruler, for whom Mah.mu-d apparently had considerable respect (TB 263); her death in 428/1028 gave him a pretext for intervention, on the grounds of Bu-yid misgovernment and the alleged presence of a large number of Isma-’ı-lı-s in Rayy. His aim, however, appears to have been the establishment of a Ghaznavid kingdom in Jiba-l, replacing the Bu-yids as the dominant power in western Iran and Iraq and as the protector of the Caliphate in Baghda-d. Jiba-l, because of its strategic position on the borders of the Byzantine empire, could be used as a springboard for attacks on Byzantium. This at any rate was Mas‘u-d’s view of the matter, as recorded by Bayhaqı-. In a letter to Qa-dir Kha-n, written from Hera-t in summer 421/1030, he claimed that the Caliph wrote to him after the conquest of Rayy and Mah.mu-d’s departure for Khura-sa-n, urging him to come quickly to Baghda-d and rescue the Caliphate from the indignities inflicted on it by a group of menials (adhna-b) (TB 79). The letter should be regarded with some caution, however, as it was written at the suggestion of Abu-Nas.r Mishka-n, after Mas‘u-d had instructed him to write to the Caliph explaining and justifying his own proceedings after the deposition of Muh. ammad; Abu-Nas.r seems to have felt that Qa-dir Kha-n, the Ghaznavids’ chief ally in the east, should be treated as on a par with the Caliph. Mas‘u-d also informed Qa-dir Kha-n of Mah.mu-d’s proposed division of his empire: the east was to go to Muh.ammad and the west to Mas‘u-d himself, whose concerns would be
(Persian) Iraq, the Ghuzz (the Turkmen nomads, many of whom had moved into Jiba-l after their expulsion from Khura-sa-n), and ‘Ru-m’ (i.e. Byzantium) (TB 80). Whether this grandiose scheme for the westward expansion of the
Ghaznavid empire was serious, or was the result of megalomania and lack of judgment arising from Mah.mu-d’s increasingly grave illness, which was apparent to Mas‘u-d and others of Mah.mu-d’s immediate circle (TB 80; Gardı-zı-
1968: p. 92), is not clear; but it may also be connected with his uneasy relationship with Mas‘u-d, his official valı--’ahd. The division of the empire reflected his preference for Muh.ammad, who would have the great cities of Khura-sa-n, the capital Ghazna, and India, while Mas‘u-d would be confronted with the ongoing problem of the Ghuzz and the challenge of carving out a new power base in the west, in the face of such potentially formidable enemies as the Ka-ku-yid ruler of Is.faha-n and H. amada-n, ‘Ala-’ al-Daula Muh.ammad, other local rulers, and ultimately the Byzantines. A poem of Farrukhı-’s to Mah.mu-d, probably written at about this time, urging him to attack Byzantium, is perhaps not as far-fetched as it seems: ‘I shall not sleep well until he says “Farrukhı-, have you made a poem on the conquest of Ru-m? Sing!”’ (p. 265, l.16). Whatever Mah.mu-d’s real intentions were, he left Mas‘u-d ill-provided with troops – less than 2,000, according to Farrukhı-(p. 304, 1.14), in a poem to Mas‘u-d; Mas‘u-d commented bitterly that his father had hoped that he would return in disgrace and failure, with his tail between his legs (TB 218). In the event, he was successful, but his departure for Ghazna after Mah.mu-d’s death removed any realistic prospect of a permanent Ghaznavid presence in western Iran. Mah.mu-d’s invasion of Jiba-l was preceded and followed by dealings with
his vassal and son-in-law Manu-chihr b.Qa-bu-s, the Zı-ya-rid. ruler of Gurga-n and T.aba-rista-n, and as one of Farrukhı-’s qas.ı-das (pp. 348-49) is devoted to this subject it will be discussed in some detail. When Mah.mu-d arrived in Gurga-n with Mas‘u-d on his way to Rayy, Manu-chihr was in Astara-ba-d: he avoided a meeting with the Sultan, but sent him 400,000 dinars and much food (inza-l). After the capture of Rayy, Manu-chihr, in fear of Mah.mu-d, according to Ibn al-Athı-r, barricaded himself into an apparently impregnable mountain fortress; when Mah.mu-d chased him out he fled to the impenetrable forests of T.aba-rista-n. He sued for peace, which was granted on payment of 500,000 dinars, and Mah.mu-d left for Nı-sha-pu-r. Manu-chihr is said by Ibn al-Athı-r to have died shortly afterwards (IA IX 261-62). Although there is some dispute over the date of his death, it must have occurred before the summer of 424/1031, as Mas‘u-d, discussing the affairs of Gurga-n and T.aba-rista-n at about this time, said they were in confusion because of the incapacity of Manu-chihr’s young son; the implication is that Manu-chihr himself was dead (TB 264). Manu-chihr’s behaviour is hard to explain except on the assumption that he had good reason to be afraid of Mah.mu-d. The prompt payment of the 400,000 dinars suggests that he may have been in
arrears with his tribute, but there may have been a more serious motive for Mah.mu-d’s anger. According to Bayhaqı-’s informant ‘Abd al-Ghaffa-r, a devoted friend and adherent of Mas‘u-d since their childhood, Manu-chihr had been in secret communication with Mas‘u-d for many years, sending him gifts and making every effort to win his favour. These contacts continued while Mah.mu-d and Mas‘u-d were in Gurga-n, when Manu-chihr, realising that Mah.mu-d was ill and seeing Mas‘u-d as his ultimate successor, tried to persuade Mas‘u-d to make a formal treaty of alliance and friendship with him. ‘Abd al-Ghaffa-r, believing that Manu-chihr was not to be trusted and might betray Mas‘u-d in order to curry favour with Mah.mu-d, and aware that Mah.mu-d had spies at Manu-chihr’s court, strenuously dissuaded Mas‘u-d from signing such an agreement; but it is possible that Mah.mu-d got wind of it and determined to punish Manu-chihr (TB 135-38). It does not appear from Farrukhı-’s qas.ı-da that he had any knowledge of
these undercurrents. After a brief meditation on the religious duty of absolute obedience to Mah.mu-d, he comments on the actions of ‘the dotard Manu-chihr’ in a surprised, scornful tone which suggests that the Ghaznavids found Manu-chihr’s reaction to Mah.mu-d’s presence in his country both puzzling and insulting. While acknowledging Mah.mu-d’s suzerainty, he made it clear that he did not want the Sultan in his lands, and tried to make his passage impossible: ‘This house is yours; pass by on the other side!’ and he destroyed the house (p. 348, 1.13), and the roads as well (p. 348, 1.19; p. 349, ll.3,8). Manu-chihr asked for pardon, but Farrukhı-accuses him of ingratitude and stupidity; although Mah.mu-d had sent him more than 50 fath. -na-mas, he did not take warning from their contents (p. 348, ll.15 ff.). It is not known whether Mah.mu-d was in the habit of sending fath. -na-mas to his vassals, and Farrukhı-’s tone seems to imply that this was unusual and a sign of favour; it has, however, been pointed out that fath. -na-mas seem to have been copied and widely disseminated. Manu-chihr is mocked for his failure to understand Mah.mu-d’s determination and the strategic skill that enabled him to lead his army through appalling terrain, high mountains, dense forests and marshy roads: ‘there were places where the elephants were swimming in mud’(p. 349, l. 6). Bayhaqı-, who accompanied Mas‘u-d on his campaign to the same area in March 426-7/1035, speaks in similar terms of the difficulties encountered by Mas‘u-d’s heavily laden army (TB 455). Manu-chihr is insultingly compared with a pig wallowing in its native mud; Mah.mu-d is the lion who knows his way round the forests far better than the pig. The du’a-’ makes it possible to date the poem, which was composed for ‘I-d al-Fit.r, Shawwa-l 420/ October 1029. Mah.mu-d’s campaign in Rayy was conducted with great brutality and
much bloodshed. The fath. -na-ma he sent to the Caliph in the summer of 420/ 1029 (Ibn al-Jauzi 1937-40 VIII pp. 109-11, 161, 268, 287-89), much longer than the Somnath fath. -na-ma, where the issue was clear and no justification was needed, is a detailed exposition of the ostensible reason for his attack on
the city and the surrounding areas. This was the alleged presence of large numbers of religious dissidents and free-thinkers, whom he described as heretics (ahl al-ilh.a-d) and divided into three groups, each more blameworthy than the other: Shı-’ı-s, followers of extreme Shı-’ı-sects (al-rafd. , al-gha-liya), and Ba-t.inı-s (Isma-’ı-lı-s), whom he equated with infidels, and linked with the Mu’tazila and philosophers. These groups were accused by unspecified fuqaha-’ of committing crimes against orthodoxy; they neglected the regular forms of worship, they refused to pay the zaka-t, they disregarded the tenets of Islamic law, they insulted the Companions of the Prophet, and practised antinomianism (madhhab al-iba-h.a). Such offences, according to the fuqaha-’, made it lawful for Mah.mu-d to take immediate and savage measures of repression. Large numbers of Ba-t.inı-s were crucified, together with the Mazdakites who lived in the environs of Rayy; all books considered heretical were burnt and many more taken away, together with large quantities of booty. Majd al-Daula himself, after being lectured by Mah.mu-d on his failure to profit by the lessons of the Sha-hna-ma and T.abarı-’s history, and rebuked because of the size of his harem, was taken as a prisoner and spent most of the rest of his life in Ghazna (Gardı-zı-p. 92). To what extent the accusations of religious irregularity and heresy in Rayy
and Jiba-l were justified is difficult to assess. The Caliph al-Qa-dir, fanatically anti-Isma-’ı-lı-, and also bitterly hostile to Mutazilism and Shiism (Kennedy 1986 pp. 241-42), did not dispute them, and the people of Rayy were forced to submit to Ghaznavid rule. Farrukhı-, in a rather muddled, ferociously antipagan and anti-Isma-’ı-lı-poem, the first part of which is missing, and which, from internal evidence, postdates Somnath (p. 223, l.14), had urged Mah.mu-d to attack Egypt, drench the desert sands with the blood of the Qarmat.ı-s, and bring back the Fa-timid caliph to Ghazna for execution by stoning. Two more poems are relevant to the Rayy campaign. In the first, composed for Mihraga-n, probably in the autumn of 419/1028, there is general praise for Mah.mu-d’s conquests, his crossing of the Oxus, and his magnanimity towards Qa-dir Kha-n (p. 266, ll.5 ff.). Rayy is then put forward as a worthy target (perhaps there was already talk of a campaign in the west, after Sayyida’s death earlier in the year). No excuse would be needed; Qarmat.ı-s were there in their thousands, and it would be a gha-zı-raid greater than Somnath (ll.1012). He should take the country (diya-r) and give it to a slave: ‘giving is the custom and habit of this great lord’ (l.13). The chief theme of the second qas.ı-da (pp.19-21) is that obedience to
Mah.mu-d is a religious duty: disobedience to him is disobedience to God, and to rebel against him is to be an infidel or heretic (ka-fir, bad-madhhabı-, bı--dı-nı-). Whoever ignores or disputes this is, by implication, not a Muslim, and, therefore, lawful prey. (This, of course, gets round the awkward fact that many of Mah.mu-d’s opponents were Muslims.) Farrukhı-quotes the example of the Amı-r of Rayy (Majd al-Daula), whose folly, ingratitude and arrogance brought him down (p. 20, ll.7-11), and the nobles of Rayy, who belittled
Mah.mu-d, thought themselves invincible and treated his H. a-jib discourteously, but ended on the gallows, with their estates and goods confiscated (p. 20, ll.17-21; p. 21, ll.1-8). Now that Rayy, like the world, belongs to Mah.mu-d, his next project is to go on pilgrimage (‘your inclination now is for Mina-and Safa-’, p. 20, l.15). The poem is both a meditation and a commentary on the events in Rayy. Mah.mu-d is like a prophet, a worker of miracles; he is portrayed as the supreme Islamic hero, with a realm even greater than Solomon’s, and is almost on a level with God. This was obviously intended for popular consumption. A notable and unattractive feature of several of Farrukhı-’s major poems
to Mah.mu-d in the last three years of his life is the brutal and contemptuous attitude displayed towards Mah.mu-d’s opponents, and even towards his allies. There are condescending references to Qa-dir Kha-n, who was a great man in his own country and an important ally, as the letter to him from Mas‘u-d, mentioned earlier, indicates; dismissal of the approaches made by Khita-
Kha-n is followed by a diatribe against the dishonesty and unreliability of the Turkish khans in general. References to Manu-chihr b.Qa-bu-s, a prince and indeed Mah.mu-d’s son-in-law, are crude, and there is disagreeable gloating over the fate in store for the Fa-timids and already incurred by the Qarmat.ı-s of Rayy (though, as we shall see in a later chapter, Mu‘izzı-used comparable language about the Crusaders). Whether this attitude was derived from Mah.mu-d himself, or whether it reflected the views of influential members of Mah.mu-d’s entourage (the suggestion has been made that these were Turkish military men), is impossible to ascertain. This attitude seems uncharacteristic of Farrukhı-, and contrasts strongly with his ‘unofficial’ poems to Muh.ammad, Yu-suf and other patrons, and with his poems on the Indian campaigns, in several of which he took part. The Indian expeditions, though much emphasis is laid on their gha-zı-aspect, are seen essentially as marvellous adventures, in a land full of wonders and treasures and strange legends, and in landscapes often utterly unlike the landscape of Afghanistan, Khura-sa-n and Transoxania with which the Ghaznavid armies were so familiar. The complicated relationship with the Turks, the everyday enemy, is entirely absent. The position is simple: the Indians are the enemy, idolaters and, therefore, fair game, but respected as brave soldiers who give a good account of themselves, and there are none of the xenophobic overtones that appear in the poems mentioned above. After the punitive expedition against Manu-chihr, which was to be the last
military action of his life, Mah.mu-d returned to Khura-sa-n in the late summer of 420/1029, first to Nı-sha-pu-r, then by slow stages to Balkh, where he spent the winter. In the spring of 421/1030, he left Balkh for Ghazna, and died there on 23 Rabı-’ II 421/30 April 1030. Farrukhı-’s whereabouts during this period are uncertain. It has been suggested that he was out of favour at the time, and this could well be true; but there seems nothing in the texts of Farrukhı-’s poetry to lend any real support to this, unless his depiction of
himself in the marthı-ya as returning to Ghazna after a year’s absence is to be interpreted literally. There is no indication whether he went with Mah.mu-d to Gurga-n or Rayy, though some of the details in the second of the Rayy poems may be from eye-witness evidence, not necessarily his own (e.g. p. 20, ll.2-8). His Mihraga-n poem on Rayy was probably presented in person, as all the court poets would have been expected to attend this festival, but in neither of the Rayy poems is there any hint that the Sultan was unwell. Gardı-zı-, the only source for the last few months of Mah.mu-d’s life, says that although he grew steadily weaker, he refused to admit that he was ill, and tried to deceive his grieving entourage (p. 92). Another poem of Farrukhı-’s, however, suggests that whatever the state of
his relationship with the Sultan, he was in Balkh during Mah.mu-d’s final illness. It was almost certainly composed for ‘I-d al-Ad.h. a-, Dhu-’l-H. ijja 420/ December 1029 (‘This is the day of alms, of giving and of sacrifice [qurba-n]’, p. 268, l.11). It seems to have been written from personal knowledge, and implies that by this time there was deep anxiety about Mah.mu-d’s health. The poem is full of foreboding and hints that all is not well: ‘God knows the secrets of men’s hearts; how should I have knowledge of a profound secret?’ (p. 268, l.14). Earlier in the poem there is emphasis on the dependence of the well-being and security of the realm on the health of the ruler: ‘May God grant him long life, so that our world be not ruined [ta-na--gardad jiha-n-i ma-
vı-ra-n]’ (p. 268, l.1), words echoed by Gardı-zı-, perhaps deliberately, in a comment on Mah.mu-d’s death: ‘ba-marg-i u-jiha-nı-ru-yı-ba-vı-ra-nı-nihad’ (p. 92, l. 13). Relief is expressed that he has gone back to wine-drinking, after an interval without wine, but this is only temporary:
Would that I could find a medicine to give him youth and life. Though it is not possible to give him youth and life, I have given him my heart – what else can one do?
